During our walks, I got to know Cave as well as I was ever to know him. He was indifferent, I think, to everyone. He gave one his private time in precise ratio to one’s belief in him and importance to his work. With groups, with the masses, he was another creature: warm, intoxicating, human, yet transcendent ... a part of each human being who beheld him at such times, the longed-for complement to the common soul. Yet though I found him, as a human being, without much warmth or intellectual interest I nevertheless identified him with the release I’d known in his presence and, for this new certainty of life’s value and of death’s irrelevance, I loved him. On the third day I made up my mind to go back East and do the necessary writing in New York, away from Paul’s hectic influence and Cave’s advice. Cave asked me to stay with him for the rest of the week but I could see that Iris regarded me now as a potential danger, a keeper of secrets who might, despite promises, prove to be disloyal; and so, to set her mind at ease as well as to suit my own new plans, I told her after lunch on the third day, when we were for a moment alone in the study, that I had said nothing to Cave, that I was ready to go back that evening if she would drive me to Spokane. “You’re a good friend,” she said. “I made a fool of myself the other night. I wish you’d forget it ... forget everything I said.” “I’ll never mention it. Now, the problem is how I can leave here gracefully. Cave just asked me this morning to stay on and ...” But I was given a perfect means of escape. Cave came running into the room, his eyes shining. “Paul! I’ve just talked to Paul in L.A. It’s all over! No heirs, nothing, no lawsuit. No damages to pay.” “What’s happened?” Iris stopped him in his excitement. “The old man’s dead!” “Oh Lord!” Iris went gray. “That means a manslaughter charge!” “No, no ... not because of the accident. He was in _another_ accident. A truck hit him the day after he left the hospital. Yesterday. He was killed instantly ... lucky devil: and of course we’re in luck too.” “Did they find who hit him?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. Iris looked at me fiercely. She had got it too. “No. Paul said it was a hit-and-run. He said this time the police didn’t find who did it. Paul said his analyst calls it 'a will to disaster’ ... he _wanted_ to be run over. Of course that’s hardly a disaster but the analyst thinks the old way.” I left that afternoon for New York, leaving Cave jubilantly making plans for the New Year: everything was again possible. Neither Iris nor I mentioned what we both knew ... each of us, in our different way, accommodating the first of many crimes, as we drove across the smoky hills to Spokane. SIX 1